Monday, January 14, 2013

January 14, 1846

Does Browning answer the charges of being a cad and making his lady cry in his letter today?

"Wednesday.

Was I in the wrong, dearest, to go away with Mr Kenyon? I well knew and felt the price I was about to pay .. but the thought did occur that he might have been informed my probable time of departure was that of his own arrival—and that he would not know how very soon, alas, I should be obliged to go—so .. to save you any least embarrassment in the world, I got—just that shake of the hand, just that look—and no more! And was it all for nothing, all needless after all? So I said to myself all the way home.

When I am away from you—a crowd of things press on me for utterance .. 'I will say them, not write them,' I think:—when I see you—all to be said seems insignificant, irrelevant,—'they can be written, at all events'—I think that too. So, feeling so much, I say so little!

I have just returned from Town and write for the Post—but you mean to write, I trust–

That was not obtained, that promise, to be happy with as last time!

How are you?—tell me, dearest—a long week is to be waited now!

Bless you, my own, sweetest Ba.

I am wholly your RB"
 
No, he does not respond to Miss Barrett's letter of the 13th! He must not have received it yet. And he writes on as if his only sin were leaving at the wrong time and the only crime was not getting his farewell snog. The tension builds. Can my heart stand the strain?

No comments:

Post a Comment